“The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way”.

It was followed by two further mentions of The Creator. In the comment section, the author Ming-Jin Liu claimed not to have meant any God, but evolution:

“We are sorry for drawing the debates about creationism. Our study has no relationship with creationism. English is not our native language. Our understanding of the word Creator was not actually as a native English speaker expected. Now we realized that we had misunderstood the word Creator. What we would like to express is that the biomechanical characteristic of tendious connective architecture between muscles and articulations is a proper design by the NATURE (result of evolution) to perform a multitude of daily grasping tasks”.

Entire Statement by David Knutson:

On this particular occasion, unfortunately, our prepublication processes for internal quality controls and the peer review both failed. The journal is committed to maintaining high standards of quality, and this time the process did not meet our standards. The issues with this paper does not reflect negatively on the vast majority of the thousands of authors, academic editors, and reviewers who publish and evaluate the research published in PLOS ONE. This past year PLOS ONE published more than 28,000 articles that were handled by a community of more than 6,000 editors and 76,000 reviewers. Although PLOS ONE’s publishing decisions are delegated to the Academic Editor handling the papers, we have a number of quality control checks that we perform in house. Most of the time, these checks work well, and catch many issues from the mundane to the detailed compliance with community standards.

The Academic Editor who handled this paper has apologized to us for the oversight. He has been asked to step down. We have also noted that the subject of the paper was outside his own direct area of expertise. This is something we are actively looking into, to find better ways of assigning the most relevant editor to each of the thousands of manuscripts submitted to PLOS ONE. Language issues have been mentioned by the authors and some commentators: I’m not excluding that language issues have contributed to this incident but the language in the article should have been corrected, and there are issues with the quality of the paper in general, the rationale of the study and its presentation relative to existing literature.

The paper has been retracted. PLOS ONE initiated the retraction after thorough editorial review in response to concerns raised by readers. Concerns were about language in the article that makes reference to a “Creator” and about the overall rationale and findings of the study. The decision to retract was taken after a review of the prepublication process, and a reevaluation of the paper by the editorial staff and two expert member of the editorial board. In addition to the specific language issue, we concluded that we could not stand by the pre-publication assessment of this paper. There were issues with the rationale and presentation of the findings that were not adequately addressed during peer review. We are reviewing our internal processes and are determined to find opportunities to tighten the quality controls without causing unnecessary delays in publication.

The current situation has highlighted the importance of post-publication peer review to permit rapid corrections. We have witnessed this process at work in the past few days, and we hope to continue to build our systems to facilitate such feedback with consideration for quality outcomes and credit. We have >6,000 academic editors and in 2015 we have used more than 76,000 reviewers. The vast majority of them dedicate a lot of time and expertise to publication in PLOS ONE. The value added by these members of the community is not transparent in the current closed review process. We are already working on the capability to offer open signed reviews, in order to provide due credit to the reviewers who dedicate their time and expertise, and to ensure accountability of the process. PLOS ONE relies on the active engagement of the scientific community to accomplish its mission of publishing all rigorous science, and to continuously ensure the robustness of the scientific record. Our processes are intended to support and optimize this engagement. We apologize for the lapse in this particular case and are determined to evolve our systems

David Knutson

Update 14.03.2016. A reader alerted me to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, stating “A spokesman for PLOS, David Knutson, said on Sunday that he could not comment on a report that Mr. Han had been asked to resign from the journal. He added that he did not know of any punitive actions in response to the incident”. I reached out to Mr. Knutson, who then explained why the above quoted statement of his was given to me exclusively. Knutson also confirmed that “PLOS stands by its statement”.

39 comments on “Hand of God paper retracted: PLOS ONE “could not stand by the pre-publication assessment””

I would like to note that PLoS used to have an international advisory board biannual meetings and 3 conference calls per year. This has stopped about 2 years ago, probably for other priorities…
I’m a member of that group, of which I am proud; however, we have not been consulted on such cultural or language issues.

Anyway, I’m reading the abstract, and its language quality looks impeccable to me. Quite different from the language of the author’s comment quoted above. From my experience, this abstract must have been revised by a professional editor or at least someone with good STM writing skills (which is actually a good thing to do, especially for authors—like me—who are not native English speakers ). The language argument by the authors seems absurd to me.

I’m not arguing for or against retraction, because this is not my field. However, there’s a big difference between a “Creator” design and a process of selection and adaptation…

There isn’t necessarily “a big difference between a “Creator” design and a process of selection and adaptation.” In Genetic Algorithms, a programmer designed a process for winnowing among randomly selected solutions based on the solution the program is trying to reach. Not survival among the pressures of the current “generation” of strings representing solutions, but selection with an end-goal in mind. Selection and adaptation to reach a plan without “poofing” one into existence — which in biology’s case would defy the laws of nature. Design and evolution in one model.

I guess to put it more succinctly… There is probably no way using only the empirical evidence to definitively distinguish between evolution by selection and adaptation for current conditions, and conscious breeding for particular future traits.

This paper should have been subjected to, at most, a corrigendum. Now I hope PLOS will reimburse the authors for APCs and give them an opportunity at resubmitting a revised version with a fresh set of peers.

Kudos to PLOS One for their swift and accurate action! I am sure readers are agnostic about the process (though retractions are convenient), but I am equally sure the journal isn’t. Retraction until fixing is a common and useful method.

@Paul Matthews: “I really can’t see much of a case being made”.

The stated case, in addition to the claim that lacks support/is a language issue, is that “there are issues with the quality of the paper in general, the rationale of the study and its presentation relative to existing literature.”

There are now too many comments under that article, but as I remember it someone characterized the work as undergraduate level or something such.

One can go on and note that creationists attempt such Trojan horses, with the help of lack of proper peer review, all too often – and get sympathies from some readers for reasons unknown – but that isn’t necessarily the case here.

Both the formal retraction notice by PLOS ONE and the statement by David Knutson do not mention anything about the position / ideas of the four authors (Ming-Jin Liu, Cai-Hua Xiong, Le Xiong and Xiao-Lin Huang) and of the position / ideas of the two affiliations (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China; Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA) about the quick retraction of their paper.

(1): did the four authors and/or the two affilations agree with the very quick retraction of their paper and/or were they consulted by PLOS about the intention of PLOS to retract their paper?

Anyone any idea?

David Knutson wrote: “our prepublication processes for internal quality controls and the peer review both failed. (…). “The Academic Editor who handled this paper has apologized to us for the oversight. He has been asked to step down.”

So publisher PLOS has accepted that they have made many mistakes.

(2): I propose that PLOS will invite the authors to re-submit to PLOS ONE an improved version of their manuscipt. I also propose that PLOS will give the authors a full waiver for the APCs when their new manuscript will pass the peer review.

(3): I advise the authors to take note of all comments of all peers on the scientific level of their manuscript. (There are also comments on various other blogs). I am sure that there are many peers who are willing to help them with improving both the scientific level and the level of English of their manuscript.

The authors and their affiliations of this paper refuse to release to professor James Coyne (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), and as well to a bunch of other readers, the entire set of primary research data. Such a refusal is a clear violation of the rules for papers which are published in PLOS ONE.

I have contacted publisher PLOS about this issue on 12 December 2015. I have suggested to retract this paper if professor Coyne has not received full access to all raw research data within one month.

We are right now 6 March 2016. Professor Coyne, and all the other interested readers, have not received full access to all raw research data of pone.0040808.

The authors and their affiliations of this paper are still unwilling to provide professor James Coyne, and other readers, unrestricted access to all raw research data. The authors and their affilations of pone.0040808 have in the meanwhile started with laywering up (which implies that their lawyers are in contact with [lawyers of] publisher PLOS).

(6): a quick action of publisher PLOS to retract also immediately pone.0040808 will underline that there is no ground for anyone to assume that publisher PLOS shows partial behaviour when it comes to retract papers from the journal PLOS ONE.

“The authors would like to correct Figs 6 and 8, as errors were introduced in the preparation of these figures for publication. In Figs 4A and 6A, the same image was used to represent the MS control in both figures. The authors have provided a corrected Fig 6 here with a new MS image from another biological replicate. In Fig 8A, the same image was inadvertently used to represent both the WT Control and OE2 Control conditions. The authors have provided a corrected Fig 8 here with the correct OE2 Control image. The authors confirm that these changes do not alter their findings and have provided the underlying images for Fig 8 as Supporting Information.”

I’d like to see how Veronique Kiermer and her team at PLOS ONE handle the above Dey et al. manuscript.

In essence, will a mass anti-Christian pitchfork-yielding demonstration against a few phrases possibly lost in translation, and yielding a retraction within days, trump a paper with a load of apparent figure manipulation protested by 2 or 3 concerned scientists? I have started the stop watch. Let’s see how long it takes to get this paper retracted.

Thanks Klaas for alerting me to this.
I am appalled that Mr Knutson of PLOS suggests I would spread false information or deliberately alter his statements. I am offering to forward his original email to me (which I quoted verbatim and unedited above) to any interested party. For this, please contact me here https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/about/

Klaas, I am not surprised about the phenomenon of “disappearing” editors without any public explanation or accountability.

In March, 2014, after months of complaining about irregularities in the accuracy of information about editorial members of Elsevier’s Scientia Horticulturae [1], the world’s premier #1 IF ranking horticultural journal, and after concerns about the ethical nature of publications by the then Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Samir C. Debnath, which are now fortunately documented at PubPeer [2], about two dozen editorial members were suddenly removed and replaced, without a single explanation to the public about this change, and all within the space of about one month.

Not to mention, coincidentally, after my complaints, I was banned from this journal as being “persona non grata” on April 10, 2014.

I guess on this date, I formally lost faith in the veracity and ethical nature of COPE members.

In my case, the public still has – and probably never will have until I publish the full truth – no idea of the truth (and academic corruption) behind these editorial changes, the publisher (Elsevier) and editors continue to trumpet their ethical superiority – successfully, I might add, given their powerful positions in the global community – and the public swallows whatever this “ethical” publisher says whole, without questioning. More than PLOS, Klaas, Elsevier’s legal arm within Reed-Elsevier, now renamed as REXL Group [3] to make it more attractive to shareholders and to try and break free of its association with academic scandals, is extremely powerful. So, they have the means and the prowess to manipulate their public image, squash dissent and brain-wash the public and academia. In contrast, in the case of PLOS, given its deep ties to COPE, the public pressure may be greater, and thus you may actually be able to pressure PLOS into providing an explanation into the disappearance of this editor. Sadly, this will never happen with Elsevier’s Scientia Horticulturae, which I claim is the most corrupt horticultural journal on this planet, after Acta Horticulturae (INternational Society for Horticultural Science) that is.

This was the first ever retraction for this journal, an even I would later come to characterize more broadly as a “black swan event”:
Teixeira da Silva, J.A. (2015) The “black swan” phenomenon in science publishing. Journal of Educational and Social Research 5(3): 11-12.http://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/jesr/article/view/7693
DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n3p11

“Response about the decision by PLoS ONE; Posted by Mingjin on 29 Mar 2016 at 08:35 GMT.

We apologize for using some inappropriate words in our paper. English is not our native language, and our understanding of the word “Creator” was not as that of a native English speaker expected. Actually, we would like to refer the word to another meaning like Nature (造化 in Chinese). We are not creationists and our paper does not relate to the creationism as well. On the contrary, if you read our paper completely, you would find that we had referred to the knowledge of evolution in the Discussion of our paper, such as “this unique ability can apparently facilitate the capacity for more effective tool making and tool use during the evolutionary process” and “dexterous performance of numerous functions following the evolutionary remodeling of the ancestral hand for millions of years”. We apologize for any troubles may have caused by this misunderstanding.

We think our paper can be corrected by removing the inappropriate words. It is not our intention to mention the creationism. We feel regret about the decision by the journal. The language of our paper did have some errors and we apologize for the language errors. However, we disagree with the concerns about the scientific rationale given by the journal. David Knutson, Public Relations Manager of PLoS, explained to Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/arti…) about the concerns on the scientific rationale in March 7, 2016. He said PLoS referred to a comment (http://journals.plos.org/…) and considered that “the authors did not explain how their work contributed to the base of scientific knowledge about the structure of the hand”. In view of that question, we think our work does not aim to further explore the anatomic structure of human hand, but would like to explore the link between function and structure. In this paper, we hope to inspire other people in the design of robotic hands.

We emailed our response about the question to the editors of PLoS ONE on March 9, 2016. Then the journal replied us after several days with more questions raised by the two members of PLoS ONE editorial board on March 14, 2016. After read these questions carefully, we think all the questions are either irrelevant or groundless. For instance, the experts considered that our paper lacked a thorough discussion about the works of evolution. But our work does not relate to hand evolution. The questions raised by the experts may be outside of their expertise because the editors told us the two experts were skilled in human biomechanics. We responded all the questions to the editors on March 18, 2016. The detailed responses would be posted if permitted by the editors of PLoS ONE. The editors replied us on March 26, 2016. They did not respond to our arguments about the questions on scientific rationale. They only said their decision stood in light of the substantial concerns. However, we still do not know what clear concerns they may have, except for the language problem.

We apologize for our inappropriate words and any hurt caused by our misunderstanding again. We hope our paper can have an opportunity to be corrected and republished based on scientific merit. The retraction cannot completely solve the problem because the inappropriate words remain intact in the original publication and may mislead more scientists. If our paper can be corrected and republished, our scientific work can also help and inspire many people in the future research, which is the dream as scientists.

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